frankly, officials and exiles alike deny that there is cruelty on the
part of the escorting soldiers, or of any other persons, whether of
high or inferior rank, who are intrusted with the guardianship and
government of the convicts. It does happen that mutinous exiles are
shot or killed in some way on the journey; but such events occur very
rarely, and only when all other means of quelling insubordination
have failed. The Russian is not cruel like the Spaniard, the Turk,
the Greek, or the Southern Slav; on the contrary, a mistaken
compassionateness and sluggishness makes him mild and considerate
rather than severe and harsh; he may force men and animals to exert
themselves to the utmost, but he does not torture them in order to
gloat over their torments. Even the name “unfortunate”, by which it is
customary to describe all exiles, originates in a feeling deeply rooted
among the people, and this feeling of compassion is shared by everyone,
including soldiers and police-officers, and the inspectors and warders
of the prisons. That even the most long-suffering and lamblike patience
may now and again be excited to angry rage by one or more miscreants is
intelligible enough; that miserable wretches at the convict stations
levy tax even on misfortune in order to gain more money than the state
promises them in salary, I was informed by some of the exiles; that the
rebels who were sentenced to exile after the last Polish rebellion were
treated by the accompanying soldiers more harshly than other exiles,
indeed with pitiless severity, was the complaint of a former gendarme
who told me the story of his life through a German-Russian interpreter.
But to make the present government responsible for such excesses, to
reproach them with constant barbarity, to persist in talking about the
knout, which was abolished years ago, and in general to represent our
Eastern neighbours as incorrigible barbarians, is simply senseless,
because in every respect untrue.
All the laws, regulations, and arrangements in force at present prove
that the government takes all possible thought for the exiles, and
strives to render their lot less hard, and moreover gives to each an
opportunity of sooner or later improving his lot. To treat exiles
with unjust severity is strictly forbidden and heavily punished;
to take anything unjustly away from them is looked upon as a grave
offence. Everywhere there reigns the desire to lessen the severity of
the punishment if it can be done, to give the convict back to human
society, if that be possible. But it is only those who really deserve
help that receive it, not those who pretend improvement. For they do
not make hypocrites in Siberia as we do in our prisons. The mania for
making prisoners canting hypocrites, which is too often seen among
us, is unknown among the Russians, for they take it for granted that
everyone honours and reveres the Church and the “dear saints”, fasts at
the proper season, and generally performs what little is demanded by a
church which is based wholly upon external forms. On the other hand,
they deal with evil in the right way, and they achieve results which we
might, nay, must envy.
Of the fifteen thousand banished, scarcely one thousand are sent
to work in the mines each year; the rest are distributed among the
different governments, being, as it is called, exiled to become
colonists. In the larger prisons not only are men and women separately
confined, but Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews are kept apart, and
religion is taken into consideration in distributing the colonists.
Whenever the convict sentenced to one of the lighter penalties has
reached the place of his destination, he is presented, on behalf of
the government, with a certificate of permission to reside there, and
is thenceforward free to pursue any lawful calling; but he may not
leave his district, or even his village, without the permission of the
authorities, and he is under the constant surveillance of the police.
About the reason for his banishment, or about his earlier life, he
is never questioned, at least never with malevolent intentions, for
“in the house of the hanged one does not speak of the hangman”. The
people among whom he lives are, or have been, themselves unfortunates,
or are descended from exiles; the few free settlers adopt the manners
and customs of the other Siberians. The “unfortunates” are helped
in every justifiable way. Even in the prisons on the way there are
workshops where industrious prisoners may earn a little; schools
also are established to prevent the ruin of the rising generation,
and the orphans of criminals are brought up at such an expenditure
of time and money that only the wilfully blind can fail to see this
gleam of light, only the maliciously dumb refrain from speaking of
it. In the prison at Tjumen we visited the prison school, in which a
young priest imparted instruction to Christian, Jewish, and Tartar
children alike, and it was a good face, a veritable head of Christ,
that this long-haired and bearded, though still youthful ecclesiastic
showed us. To be sure, the Jewish and Tartar boys had to read and
repeat the catechism of the Orthodox Church as well as the Christian
children, and a quiet hope of winning one or another of the former to
Christianity may perhaps have lived in the breast of the priest; but
what harm could priest or catechism do compared with the advantage
gained? The boys learned to read Russian by means of the catechism, and
they learned writing and arithmetic as well; that was the main thing.
In the same place we visited an orphan asylum founded, built, and for
the most part maintained and conducted, by a wealthy lady, and destined
for the children of exiles who died on the journey or in the town
prisons. It was a model institution in the best sense of the term, with
happy child-faces, beautiful school-rooms and dormitories, workshops
and play-rooms, a little theatre with all the necessary appurtenances,
the whole a work of mercy whose value cannot be gainsaid. But we were
to learn more than this.
[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Interior of a Siberian Peasant’s Dwelling.]
In Tjumen, Omsk, Tobolsk, and not only in the towns, but throughout the
various governments, we lived among and had constant intercourse with
exiles who had for the most part been convicted of lighter offences,
thieves, cheats, sharpers, tramps, and vagabonds, as well as with
seditious Poles and other rebels. The bank director who received us
hospitably was a Polish rebel sentenced to twelve years’ banishment,
and the joiner who made us some boxes had robbed the post; the coachman
who drove us had been guilty of a serious theft; the waiter who served
us had picked the pocket of a guest in an inn; the friendly man
from Riga who helped us to cross the Irtish had forged a document;
Goldmacher, our Jewish valet, had sold little Russian girls to Turkish
harems; the maid who cleaned our room had killed her child; the chemist
in Omsk was said to have dealt in poisons with no good intentions.
After a time we looked at every one in the light of the crime or
misdemeanour which he might have committed, and we had only to inquire
of the superintendent of police about some worthy men, among whom were
merchants, notaries, photographers, actors, to hear of false coining,
embezzlement, fraud, and so on. Yet all these people earned their daily
bread, and something over, and many a one who wished to remain unknown
would not have suffered inquiries as to his past to go unpunished,
because he had completely broken with it.
That an exile who has been a criminal can thus break with his past is
due entirely to his fellow-citizens and the government, who strive, by
every means in their power, to further all honest endeavours to begin
a new life. Those who desire work get it without mistrust; they are
taken into service without anxiety; the former thief is employed as
groom, coachman, or cook; the child-murderess is hired to wait upon
children; the convict artisan plies his own trade when his services are
required. And we are assured that those who employ them have seldom
reason to regret it. Thus many a criminal is gradually restored to
society as a respectable citizen, and his sins are not visited upon
his children to the fourth, indeed scarcely to the second generation.
What is practically impossible with us is quite possible in Siberia--to
transform a criminal into an honest man. That this does not always
succeed, that there are incorrigibles in Russia as well as among us,
is freely admitted by the Siberians themselves; but it is a noteworthy
fact that the idler who is cast off by his community in Siberia falls
into crime much more readily than the criminal who has suffered
punishment relapses into his former habits.
While the class of exiles whom we have hitherto considered are allowed
to follow any occupation they may choose, those who have committed
graver crimes are compelled to labour in the mines. With regard to
Nertschinsk, in which on an average four thousand of these unfortunate
exiles work, I have obtained through General von Eichwald, the present
superintendent of the mines on the crown-lands, the most precise
information, and what I learned about the convicts themselves may be
shortly related as follows:--
All the criminals who are condemned to the mines are brought thither
in chains, and are obliged to perform the same amount of work in their
fetters as the miners who are free. The intelligent overseer of the
mine, under whose command and surveillance they are, treats them well
if only to secure his own life and the lives of his family, for he has
not sufficient forces at his disposal to quell an insurrection should
one arise. The crime of each convict is made known to him; so he asks
no questions of the convict himself with regard to his past. But after
some time the great majority pour out their hearts to him and beg for
a mitigation of punishment. The families of a criminal condemned to
the mines are also allowed to follow him, or he is not prevented from
forming family ties. If he is bound to humanity in this way, he often,
very often, becomes penitent, and with repentance awakens the hope that
the past may be forgotten, followed by the endeavour to make it so. He
works one, two years in chains, conducts himself well, and thus awakens
confidence. His superior orders his fetters to be removed. He remains
true to his resolutions, continues to work diligently, and begins to
take thought for his family. This binds him fast to the land he had
dreaded so unspeakably at first; it turns out not so bad as he had
expected, and he begins to grow contented. Now is the time to restore
him to society. The overseer gives him permission to till the soil.
Years have passed since his crime was committed; he only remembers it
like an evil dream. Before him he sees a growing peasant-estate, behind
him his chains. His native land seems strange to him now, and he has
become reconciled to the foreign one. He becomes a peasant, works,
earns money, and dies a reformed man. With his death the bondage of his
children ceases, and they continue as free Siberian subjects to till
the piece of land with which the government presents them. This is no
invention, but reality.
[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Types of Siberian Convicts--“Condemned to the
Mines”.]
Not every criminal, however, thus submits to his fate. Full of
resentment against it and against all mankind, discontented with
everything and everyone, tired of work, perhaps also tortured by
home-sickness, or at least pining for freedom, one finds out another in
similar mood, and both, or several, resolve on flight. For weeks and
months, perhaps for years, they watch for a favourable opportunity;
one relates to the other over and over again the story of his life,
describes to him in the most minute detail his native village, the
locality and the house in which he spent his childhood, teaches him
the names of his relations, of the people in the village, of the
neighbouring villages and the nearest towns, omitting nothing, and
impressing it all deeply on the mind of his comrade, who does the same
to him, for they intend to exchange names and histories to render
identification less easy in case of capture. A smith is bribed, won,
persuaded to flight, and a tool to break the fetters is found, or,
if need be, stolen. Spring has become a reality, the day of flight
has come, and escaping without much probability of being missed for
a few hours is very easy under the present system in the mines. If
the fugitives reach the forests they are safe from recapture, but by
no means from other dangers. For a wandering native Yakoot or Tungus
hunting in the forest may be tempted by the sight of a fur-coat better
than his own, and for its sake his sure bullet remorselessly ends a
human life. Apart from such misadventures, the fugitive meets with
scarcely any hindrance. For every Siberian, from innate good-nature,
or compassion wrongly bestowed, perhaps also from fear or laziness, is
more ready to help a fugitive than to hinder his flight. In all, or at
any rate in many of the villages on the route, the villagers place a
can of milk, a large piece of bread, and perhaps even a piece of meat
behind an open window to furnish the fugitive who may pass through
their village by night with food, and thus to prevent his stealing. So
long as the fugitive takes only what is freely offered to him, so long
as he begs for what he needs, refrains from seizing things forcibly,
and neither steals nor robs, even the district-governor shuts an eye
when unknown people travel by night through his village, appropriate
the food intended for unfortunates, and seek and find a night’s rest in
the baths, which are always warm, and always stand apart from the other
buildings. And though an “unfortunate” should beg in broad daylight, no
one will betray him; should the same “unfortunate” beg for a bridle, no
one will refuse it who has one to spare. What he wants the bridle for
they know well enough. Outside of the village the horses are grazing,
untended by anyone notwithstanding wolves and bears. The fugitive walks
up to the herd, throws the bridle over the head of a capable stallion,
swings himself up on its broad back, and trots comfortably away.
“Nikolai Alexandrovitch,” someone announces to the owner of the horse,
“an unfortunate has just seized hold of your best black horse, and
ridden away towards Romanowskaja; shall we follow him?”
“_Nitschewo_,” answers Nikolai, “the little horse will come back; it is
probably an unfortunate. Let him ride.”
And the little horse does come back; for in the meadow behind
Romanowskaja the “unfortunate” had exchanged it for a fresh one on
which to continue his journey, while the black horse trots complacently
home along the familiar road.
[Illustration: Fig. 78.--Flight of an Exile in Siberia.]
Thus aided and abetted, ninety out of a hundred fugitive exiles reach
Tjumen, Perm, and even Kasan. If they were more experienced in travel,
or had some idea of geography, if they did not always keep to the same
routes by which they travelled from Russia, very many, if not most of
them, would reach their goal in safety. But in Tjumen, Perm, or Kasan
nearly all are recaptured. And even if those who have exchanged names
do not forget their _rôle_; or if others answer only “I don’t know”
to every question, neither exchange of name nor obstinate ignorance
will save them ultimately from the sentence to return to Siberia, nor
from the strokes of the rod which are meted out to every recaptured
fugitive. The captive has to traverse a second time the penal route,
possibly only to make another attempt at escape shortly after his
arrival. I am told that many exiles have travelled thus four, five,
even six times through the greater part of Siberia.
Fugitives who yield to the temptation to steal or commit some
other crime on the way, come to an untimely end. In such cases the
good-nature of the peasant-villagers is transformed into revengeful
anger. If he is taken, nothing will save him from an agonizing death.
Then a corpse is found on which no marks of violence are noticed. The
body is buried, and the finding and burial are duly notified to the
magistrates, who inform the governor, and he, in his turn, communicates
with the governor-general, but the unhappy victim of popular fury has
rotted in his grave before the government medical officer could reach
the spot, even if he wished to do so. Upon whom this vengeance has
fallen no one knows. In this way, but not by order of the government,
an exile may disappear, and no one can tell what has befallen him, no
authorities are able to give any information. But every exile who is
sent to Siberia knows what awaits him if he should steal or commit any
crime when a fugitive. And for this reason it is possible to live here,
in the midst of thousands of criminals, as securely as anywhere else,
perhaps more securely than in our great towns which contain the scum of
humanity.
I have attempted to give a faithful picture of the conditions which
hold now, or which held in 1876.[87] It has not been my intention to
soften or embellish. Banishment to Siberia is in all cases a severe
punishment. It is more severe in proportion to the culture of the
person on whom it falls, and in the eyes of an educated man it must
always seem terrible. But banishment to Siberia was never meant to be
other than a punishment, and it was meant to fall more heavily on the
educated than on the uneducated. The justice of such a principle may
be disputed, but it cannot be entirely denied. It is only possible,
however, to form a fair idea of the lot of exiles in Siberia when we
compare it with that of our own criminals.
What becomes of the unhappy beings who people our prisons? What becomes
of their families, their wives, their children? What fate awaits the
prisoners when their time of imprisonment has expired; what have their
families to look forward to?
Answers to these questions can be given by all who are acquainted with
our penal institutions.
If the unhappy lot of our criminals be compared, honestly and without
prejudice, with that of the exiles in Siberia, the result will not be
doubtful. Every true friend of humanity must echo the wish which came
to me in the distant East, and which has never since left me:
“If only we had a Siberia too: it would be better for our criminals,
and better for ourselves”.
AN ORNITHOLOGIST ON THE DANUBE.
Hungary was, and is, and will continue to be one of the goals of the
German ornithologist’s ambition. Situated more favourably than any
other country in Europe, lying as it does between the North Sea and the
Black Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean, the great northern plain
and the Alps--including within its boundaries both the North and the
South, steppes and mountains, forests, rivers, and marshes--it offers
great advantages and attractions to resident and wandering birds alike,
and thus possesses a richer bird-fauna perhaps than any other country
in our quarter of the globe. Enthusiastic descriptions of this wealth,
from the pen of our most illustrious investigators and masters, have
contributed not a little to increase and strengthen the longing--I
would almost call it inborn--that all the bird-lovers of Germany have
to see Hungary. It is strange, however, that this beautiful, rich
country, lying so near to us, has been so rarely visited by Germans.
I myself had seen only its capital and what one can see of the country
from the railway; I therefore shared most thoroughly in the longing of
which I have just spoken. It was to be fulfilled, but only to return
even more ardently thereafter. “None walks unpunished beneath the
palms”, and no lover of birds can spend May-tide in Fruskagora without
having for ever after a longing to return.
“Would you like,” asked my gracious patron, the Crown Prince Rudolph,
“to accompany me to South Hungary for some eagle-shooting? I have
definite reports of perhaps twenty eyries, and I think that we should
all be able to learn much, if we visited them and observed diligently.”
Twenty eyries! One must have been banished for long years on the
dreary flats of North Germany, one must have gloated over the bright
pictures raised in one’s mind by the glowing reports of some roaming
ornithologist, to appreciate the joy with which I agreed to go. Twenty
eyries, at no very great distance from Vienna and not far from Pesth:
I should not have been my father’s son had I remained indifferent. The
days seemed hours when we were busy with all sorts of preparations, and
again they seemed to lengthen out into weeks, such was my impatient
desire to be off.
It was but a small travelling party that started from Vienna on the
second day of the Easter holidays (1878), but we were merry and
hopeful, eager for sport and energetic. Besides the august lord
of the chase and his illustrious brother-in-law, there were but
three--Obersthofmeister Count Bombelles, Eugen von Homeyer, and myself.
A day later, at Pesth, we got aboard the swift and comfortable vessel
which carried us towards the mouth of the “blonde” Danube. In Lenten
mist suffused with morning sunlight, the proud Kaiserburg stood out
before us, and the gardens of the Bloxberg were bright with the first
green of the young year, as we took leave of the capital of Hungary.
With the scenery of the Rhine, of the Upper, or even, it is said, of
the Lower Danube, the stretch of country through which we were now
rapidly borne cannot be compared. A few kilometres below the sister
towns the banks become flat, the hills on the right side of the stream
sink into featureless heights, and only in the dim blue distance does
the eye catch the gently curved lines of moderately high ranges. From
the left bank extends the broad plain. Without end, without change, it
stretches in uniform monotony; hardly one of the large, rich villages
is conspicuous enough to catch the eye. Here and there a herdsman
in shepherd’s dress leans on his strong staff, but his charge is
not a flock of simple sheep; grunting, bristly pigs crowd around
him--how brown with the sun he is!--or lie in rows about him enjoying
comfortable rest. Around the pools filled by the floods the lapwing
flutters; over the broad flats the hen-harrier wings its unsteady
flight; the martins sweep in and out of their nests burrowed in the
steep banks; dainty water-wagtails trip about on the shingle-roofs of
the innumerable boatmills; ducks and cormorants rise in noisy alarm
from the stream; while kites and hooded crows fly in circles over its
surface. Such is a picture of this region.
Soon, however, the landscape changes. The alluvial plain, traversed
by the river which made it, broadens out. Over the flats, not yet
protected by dikes, and submerged by every flood, the river extends in
numerous, for the most part nameless branches. A luxuriant growth of
wood clothes the banks and islands, and as the fringe is too dense to
allow any glimpse of the interior, this meadow-wood bounds the view for
mile after mile. Variable and yet monotonous are the pictures which
appear and disappear, as in a dissolving view, while the ship follows
the windings of the stream. Willows and poplars--white, silvery, and
black--elms and oaks, the first predominating, the last often sparse
in their occurrence, form the material of these pictures. Above the
dense fringe, which consists almost wholly of willow, there rise older
trees of the same kind; beyond these in the woods, which often extend
far inland, rise the impressive crowns of lofty silver poplars and
black poplars, and the bald heads of old gnarled oaks. A single glance
embraces all phases of tree-life from the sprouting willow-shoot to
the dying giant--trees living, sprouting, growing, and exultant in the
fulness of their strength; trees withered at the top, victims of fire
from the heavens or from the earth and half reduced to tinder; trees
prostrate on the ground, crumbling and rotting. Between these we see
the gleams of flowing or standing water; above all is the great dome
of heaven. In the secret shades we hear the song of the nightingale
and the finches, the lyrics of the thrush, the shrill cry of falcon or
eagle, the laugh of the woodpecker, the raven’s croak, and the heron’s
shrill shriek.
Here and there is a glade not yet overgrown, a gap in the wood
and through which we catch a glimpse of the landscape in the
background,--of the broad plain on the right bank of the stream,
and the fringe of hills in the distance, of an apparently endless
succession of fields, from which at distant intervals rise the church
spires which mark the scattered villages or, it may be, townships. In
summer, when all is of one predominantly green hue, in late autumn,
winter, and early spring, when the trees are leafless, this shore
landscape may seem almost dull; now it is monotonous, but yet not
unattractive, for all the willows and poplars have young leaves, or in
many cases catkins, and, here and there at least, they make the woods
gay and gladsome.